I have two females, Violet and Diamond. Please read my other posts for their full description including diet, etc. To cut down to the chase, I walked into my chinchillas cage this morning and there was blood all over the top shelf. I have pictures of Violet's hind foot, which is the injured chinchilla. I want to take the chinchillas to the vet, but my mom says its just a scratch and that there's nothing we can do. I need the following information: Is it because Violet's feet looks dry, how could she have gotten hurt (theories), what to do, is a vet needed, what we can do to help her, any diet changes, and any other information that you can possibly give. Cage is cleaned daily, I came in to clean, so please don't mind mess. Thanks!

First of all none of the photos show up since the forum is not directly linked to your computer, you need to upload them online then link them from there. I suggest using a photo share site (for example I use Flickr, but there a many others), the attachments don't always work on the forum.

So based purely on the description, my guess is her feet got dried out and cracked, if the blood is just from her foot. If there is no sign of infection and the bleeding has stopped you can try gently using a damp cloth and cleaning up her foot then using some bag balm on her feet to help heal them. A little bag balm goes a long way. If you don't have any bag balm or can't find any you can get vitamin E gel caps from a drugstore and just poke a hole in it to use on the feet. In the mean time you will need to make sure the cage stay clean, which may mean changing the bedding daily (since you said in another post that one of the chins is peeing everywhere) to avoid infection.

Depending on what you do have in the cage, if you only have flat surfaces, you might want to add some perches, clay pots, tunnels, and other non flat things to stand on. Standing on flat surfaces is unnatural and can cause the chin to put pressure on their heels causing them to widen and crack. A chin's hind feet should sort of look like trees, the heel being the thin truck and widening at the toes, the branches.